A leisurely walk in the Devil’s kitchen

Snowdonia National Park is really a wonderful place to hike and enjoy the beautiful scenery. After hiking Snowdon, we were looking for a leisure walk to recover for the climb.

We did the Cwm Idwal Nature trail, a National Trust path taking you through a beautiful valley, full of amazing rock formations. This bowl-shaped hollow is filled with crystal clear waters, but was incredibly windy. It was an amazing hike and the weather was not too bad, despite the wind.

The hike starts at the iron gate. You just have to follow the stoned paved path, enjoy the views of the mountains around and look at the peculiar vegetation. The path will lead you to Llyn Idwal, a small lake enclosed by majestic mountains.

We decided to walk around the lake following the path to the left, leading to the shores of the lake then back to where we came from.

If the weather is good, you can climb the boulders path up to the top of Llyn y Cwn to get a view from above. It was a bit too windy for us to feel confortable doing it so we just walked around the lake.

I have only been there once, so I’m not too sure. In regards to the altitude it’s probably windier compared to other places. At the beginning I thought it would be protected from the wind because it’s kind of a little bowl shaped valley but I was wrong 😀

Such beautiful mountains and the view can only be spectacular if you made the climb to the top! I agree with you about windy…if it’s windy, it is very likely to put me off going above and beyond. If it’s raining but not to wet but there’s no wind, I don’t really mind, but windy can get dangerous very fast 😀

I forgot to add that one time, I was climbing this hill not to far from my place to see a great view of the city. But it was windy. Yet I persisted all the way to the top. It was windier at the top and I had to go down after five minutes because the wind was making my ears hurt 😀

I don’t like water, so anything to do with it except for showering no thank you! 😀 But I remember when I swam, I always felt the water pushing on my ears, and water always got stuck inside my ear easily D:

I can actually! I sleep with ear plugs every night and I can still hear Le snoring…. 😀 Usually when I go to a concert without earplugs, it takes the whole night before going back to normal the next morning. Same with clubs and other noisy places.

I definitely do NOT like water. Happy to hike up a hill any day than float in water 😀 As for concert, while the temporary hear loss is not that nice, I am usually too ‘wowwwowow’ over the concert to care much 😀

Oh, I’d love to go back to Wales and really walk there. The scenery is so majestic and moody, with those low clouds and soft-looking green tufty stuff on the ground. Is this close enough for you to just go for the weekend?

It was my first time in North Wales and I must say that I loved the landscape! Very dramatic! It’s a 3 hours drive to get there but the highway is very congested so it took us about 4 and half to get back. We spent a weekend there. If you really want to enjoy the hike and the scenery it’s best to spend the night around.

Oh my goodness! This takes me back to the early 1980s! The first photo looks the same, only not….there used to be some discernible ruined miners barracks in the distance, looks like they’ve almost gone.